


Wide Eyes, Steady Hands

by maplewoodmoth



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 23:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17518043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplewoodmoth/pseuds/maplewoodmoth
Summary: I wrote this like. Years ago and I might as well post it now. Horatio, from the beginning to the end.





	1. CHAPTER 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please be kind I wrote this like 5 years ago for a final and the options were either rewriting Jane Eyre or writing from a different perspective of Hamlet and now that I'm writing this I kind of want to write a lesbian Jane Eyre rewrite because I hated that book. Anyway.

CHAPTER 1:  
i.  
i keep thinking of Ophelia, singing loudly in empty hallways, to hide the echoes and the loneliness.  
trudging determined along the river bottom, weighed down by her aching heart and waterlogged skirts. her mud filled shoes scare the catfish up.

 

Something inside Horatio breaks when he sees Ophelia dancing around and singing sweet as a lark. She sounds like she is without a care in the world, yet there are tears streaming down her face.  
Unable to meet her eyes as she passes, Horatio instead watches her hands. Her hands, which are steady as stone as she hands him flowers.  


Her cuticles are bloody, and her nails bitten short; dirt outlines her bone thin fingers. Horatio is used to seeing Ophelia with dirty hands, but her hands have always looked strong if thin and rough around the edges. (It is one of the hazardous inevitabilities of working in the gardens, that one will eventually find the creases of their palms perpetually stained green, and scratches from stubborn thorns on weeds you don’t remember pulling litter like pale crosses upon the backs of hands and wrists). Now her hands just look ragged.  


Her tiny, muddy hands shove a bundle of crushed leaves and grass at him, and helpless, he accepts. The bundle is picked and arranged with abandon, delicate roots still clinging stubbornly to clumps of dirt. Now and then some of them break off to shower Horatio’s boots on the castle flagstones. His breath stutters in his chest for a moment, because more likely than not, these are flowers that Ophelia has picked from her own garden, carefully tended to throughout the seasons. To see them handled so carelessly by the very hands that tamped soil gently around their roots in protection- it’s almost blasphemy, if either of them believed in anything even remotely close to a god at this point. These flowers and herbs, tended to with such care are broken and crushed by the very hands that cared for them. If there is any other irony to be found in this situation, Horatio thinks, it would be found in that small detail. Stems are broken, leaves are crushed, and Horatio feels like he can’t breathe; can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.  


Horatio tries to catch her gaze, but her eyes hurt to look at. They are empty, broken things, and her cheeks are red and blotchy from her ugly and silent crying. He looks down at his hands, hurting too much to keep meeting her empty eyes. His hands, which are still full of the flowers that O shakily, but firmly and insistently pressed at him: closing her fists over his to wrap his fingers over the stems.  


Rue.  


For regret.  


Oh… Oh.

  

Horatio looks to the bundle that she is carrying still, as she flits around the room, past the windows, past the wall draperies, but stopping at the people. She curtsies to the furniture and offers to waltz with a severe portrait; and still through it all she remains clutching her bouquet as she makes her rounds. Horatio looks to Ophelia’s remaining bundles, the ones that she has kept for herself, and wonders.  


Pansy and Nettle. Rue and Anemone; Cyclamen and Sweet Peas. Traveler’s Joy, Bellflowers, paired with Stock and Hydrangea. Cypress and Snapdragons. Chrysanthemums, Thistles; Gladiolus and Ivy. Daffodils.  
oh.  


Horatio thinks he might laugh but his throat is too tight to make a sound. His hands are shaking; the tiny leaves and ripped up roots twitch with his suppressed hysterical laughter. Another cascade of dirt showers his boots- tiny pebbles settling against his ankles and between his toes, shoved into his heels- shoved into his soul.  


Ophelia is still flitting about the room. She isn’t singing anymore, but she is humming. Broken phrases of tavern songs, improper for a lady of her standing to know, mix in with snatches of verses church hymns and bars of folk songs. Horatio’s eyes are drawn again to Ophelia’s hands as she carefully and methodically strips the leaves and petals from her bundle of flowers- shedding them in a careless and concise manner, probably similar to how she shed her shoes some time ago- until only the stalks are left.  


Her hands are steady.


	2. CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2:

ii.  
I keep thinking of Horatio, following his prince down his maddening path towards hell, willingly and grouchily, but without considering the fact that he doesn’t have to. He does it anyway.  
(when he leaves Elsinore on horseback, his horses’ shoes startle the crows and he thinks “ah yes, another murder”)

  

Something inside Horatio aches when he sees Ophelia dancing around, singing her broken tavern songs and dirges.  


“Do you recognize me, Lady?”  


Ophelia grins at him with empty eyes, barely pausing a moment to meet his gaze.  


“Where will you go, my Lady?”  


Ophelia laughs, a high, bitter, and broken thing. But her eyes flick to Horatio’s, wide. Wide as her carefully empty smile. She doesn’t respond to him as she spins across the room but her eyes stay on him, and he knows she hears his use of tense.  
Will go, he says, not have gone.  


She twirls away, shedding shredded fabric and flower petals, dirt and brocade alike.  


Ah, he thinks.  


Her hands are still steadier than his: he clenches his hands tightly into fists, shoving them deep inside his pockets to hide his shaking. He feels the dirt and roots of the flowers he still holds crumble between his fingers, staining the lining of his jacket pockets.  


He breathes out, and watching Ophelia sing, his hands slowly steady.  
Goodbye Little Sister, he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Ophelia offered for Horatio to join her, only once. He declined  
> They are alike in many ways: they both had to cut their hearts out in order to make their choices. Ophelia, in order to cut her ties and cut herself free from Hamlet’s beautiful gauntlet. Horatio, in order to stay- it burns being so close to a candle with a glass over it- using up all it’s limited oxygen in order to keep burning bright. But Ophelia is a gardener and Horatio a scholar, they both know how to cut and trim the necessary parts of a blighted bush, an obtuse source. It is difficult, but not impossible.


	3. CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3:

iii.  
I keep thinking of Laertes, trying to make his father proud and his sister happy and too proud by far to lift his sword high enough to block.  
(His last thoughts are of his sister’s flower crowns that they used to make. before responsibilities, before kingdoms and chess pieces in a mad king’s war, they were two siblings making beauty in battlefields).

The Lady Ophelia is dead.  


Beggar's cry; poet’s lament; Laertes mourns and Lord Hamlet returns.  


Hamlet grieves loudly, just like how he does everything, except be himself. He is back, in all his glory of madness and revelry, and Horatio is helpless. He can’t help but follow, drawn like a moth to the flame. Horatio sometimes thinks that he has only really lasted this long, because from the moment he saw Hamlet he was never able to look anywhere else.  


Hamlet is a fire that no one can pull away from, no matter how burnt they grow.  


But Ophelia is dead and gone, and Horatio does not know whether to laugh or cry.


	4. CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4:

iv.  
I keep thinking of Hamlet, fighting for a kingdom that will never be his; fighting for a father that will never acknowledge him; fighting for a truth that drives him mad and kills him in the end. he is the villain of his own story.  
(whenever he sees his father’s ghost, he always wishes for a greeting, some sign of familiarity, instead of a directive and a war order: he squashes the thought bitterly. “men,” he thinks, in all his 17 years, “are too old for hugs and childish things.” and he prepares for war.)

Horatio knows that if he goes to the stables, he will find a draft horse missing and a very confused young stable hand searching frantically for his spare pair of breeches and boots. All of these things will have mysteriously gone missing in the night after Ophelia’s death.  


He also has a feeling that if he heads into the village proper, and asks around the daily market- among the hawkers and the fishmongers selling their goods- that he will find a family. There will be a family: perhaps they own a bakery, but maybe they are butchers or tailors. They will be teary eyed and mourning, for having put their daughter to rest the other day by setting her serene, blonde corpse adrift down the river to return to God’s green Earth. They will probably be thinking very kindly of the strange-mannered young man (barely a child playing dress up, really, if his voice that still has yet to deepen and crack is any indication) who passed through the other night, trading for a night of room and board as well as a reliable map with a beautiful lady’s dress that he claims had belonged to his recently departed sister. With his red rimmed eyes, dark and sad, the tailor’s family will find themselves sympathizing with his plight. It helps as well, when he graciously helps the family prepare their daughter for her funeral, and doesn’t say a word for the rest of the night, nor the next day after. It helps that his face is still youthfully round, and that his hands, while thin and delicate, hold calluses, presumably from gardening, that show that this boy does not shy from hard work. His sad eyes and the gruff cough he uses to hide his much higher voice only aid in endearing him to the family in short notice. The Tailor won’t question it, being able to tell the value of the dress merely by eyeing it’s exact seams, it’s heavy cloth make, and the design of the fine-spun wool shawl. The young man seems glad to be rid of the dress and the memories it presumably carries with it anyway: he parts from the garment with barely any bartering at all.  


The Tailor’s family understands though. Everyone is glad to be rid of something, whether shedding fabric like years, or tresses of hair like secrets.  


The rumors and eyewitnesses who watched their lovely Lady Ophelia fall and drown will remain stubbornly silent; short-worded and close-mouthed upon the subject of her death, despite intense questioning from the King, Laertes, and the Mad Prince Hamlet, among others. (Horatio, curiously, is not among the crowd of questioning crowns).  


The thing about drowned corpses though, is that after a period of time it ceases to resemble the person it once was: skin bleaches from even the darkest colors, gaining blotched discolorations- the body becomes slick and bloated and peeling. An autopsy is impossible; nobody spends longer than they have to looking at the corpse, not when they have the blonde hair and familiar, finely-made dress to already confirm the identity. During the short and perfunctory examination of the body, a gravedigger has to excuse themselves more than once to briefly displace the contents of their stomach. The joking afterwards is more an attempt to forget.  


Everybody has something to run from, and usually a good reason for it. The people: the witnesses, the Tailor- they know that.  


Horatio knows even if he looked, he wouldn’t find the strange young man with the soft youthful face, sad sad sad brown eyes, and flower-stained fingers.  


He wouldn’t want to: at least one of them has managed to get out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2\. He and Ophelia both. They always did have terrible taste in men.  
> 3\. And like a moth with a flame, it was only a matter of time until they were burnt. Melted like spun sugar: fairy floss- too delicate, too beautiful, too easily singed when blackened by fire.  
> 4\. He never ruined his night vision, because he was blind to see the shadows for what they were. All he saw was beautiful spots and dancing lights and he never ruined his night vision because he never had it to begin with.  
> 5\. Because of it.  
> 6\. We hold these truths to be self evident, that i am incapable of writing things that aren’t hella fucking gay


	5. CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5:

v.  
I keep thinking of Fortinbras, left with a future, a kingdom he never saw coming. Left with bodies to bury and no explanation. A foolish burden he willingly carries.

When Horatio leaves Elsinore two years later on horseback, he does not look back. Fortinbras does not ask him to stay, though he phrases something like it. Horatio does not say why he is going, nor does he say where.  
He does not look back.  
~~~  


When Horatio first brings up the idea that he is leaving, it is as much merely an idea as it is merely a request- that is to say not at all. Nor, indeed, is it brought up in tone of describing a passing fancy. It is done when Horatio remarks, quite decidedly and quite firmly, in the middle of Fortinbras’s dismissal and lamentations about a Cooper’s poorly written request for more funds late within the king’s chambers, that he is leaving in a fortnight. The King’s expression flickers, before settling on a sort of betrayed curiosity: sometimes Horatio can’t help but feel something like fondness for the new king, thrown so unexpectedly into the whole royalty of Denmark fray. His king who isn’t his king; who marched with his soldiers straight into Elsinore and took one look around the gore stained dining hall, empty but for an equally bloody and teary eyed Horatio.  


Who promptly and horrified asked, “What is this sight?”. And after listening without a word through Horatio’s grief garbled explanations for what happened, cried “O proud Death!” and grieves with Horatio, ordering a soldier’s funeral for Hamlet. Horatio is grateful for him taking command; he himself is hardly in a state to organize anything. All of his usual composure is dead and gone with his best friend, lost with his Prince’s last breath.  


At the funeral pyre, Fortinbras turns to a silent and weary Horatio. “Well if someone must be king,” he says but doesn’t continue, and Horatio can’t help but agree.  
~~~  


Fortinbras has the same flair for dramatics that Hamlet did, but not the same skill at deception and hiding his emotions. Horatio will be forever grateful for this. It makes him easier to predict.  


Horatio doesn’t belong to this King, though the same cannot be said the other way. But Fortinbras is no Hamlet. He is no brilliant mind sharp enough to shatter, no blistering wit and quick smiles at inside jokes and puns no one else catches. He does not favor figs over dates, or have an inability to feel cold, even in the chilliest of winters and frosts. No--he is not Hamlet, and Horatio cannot help but be relieved by it.  
~~~  


Fortinbras pauses, something like hurt, something like danger overshadowing his features at Horatio’s sudden announcement.  


“And what will I do without my faithful advisor.” It is not a question. Why are you leaving me, is what Fortinbras carefully does not say.  


“I will arrange for you to have another”, Horatio responds in this careful conversation within a conversation. I cannot bear to stay anymore.  


“It won’t be the same. They won’t be good enough”, Fortinbras waves a hand in dismissal at Horatio’s words. Stay for me please? Stay with me, please?  


“There will be a suitable replacement, I assure you. I will make sure all affairs are in order.” Horatio is firm in his statement. I can’t.  


It’s because of him, isn’t it.  


… Yes…  


Aren’t I enough?  


Horatio doesn’t respond.  


Something that doesn’t sound like a demand to stay is issued .  


Something that doesn’t sound like a quiet but firm rebuttal and dismissal doesn’t pass through the air between them. But both know exactly what the other means.  
Ah. Politics.  


It’s a conversation where no one says exactly what they mean, but they don’t have to. No one says what they really mean in Elsinore. Horatio is an old hat at conversations like this; sometimes he wishes he wasn’t.  


“And where will you go?” Fortinbras doesn’t sneer, he has too much class for that, but he does sound skeptical which, like anything royalty usually says, is a near cousin.  


His words are an unknowing echo of Marcellus’, from Horatio’s memory of just a few weeks prior.  
~~~  


They are in Marcellus’s room on one of their few shared night off, neck deep into their third wine bottle and just soaked enough that their discussion of past events (Hamlet) and past friends (Hamlet) and the future (without Hamlet) doesn’t have quite the same sting that it does sober.  


“And where will you go? To some other castle with unfortunately tragic royalty? Scotland, perhaps hmm?” Marcellus is blunt when sober, and even more so when drunk, weighed down with drink and memory.  


“Away,” Horatio merely says. Not here, Horatio doesn’t say, not where Hamlet’s memory floats over my shoulder, commenting on the most mundane things: the eggs, the maids, the flowers at the funerals. Hamlet may have been the one playing mad but he is not the only one who actually goes mad. With those that were there, those that are left, he is most definitely not.  


“Back to college perhaps?”  


“No”, Horatio manages to choke out, “not there.” Somewhere that doesn’t have Hamlet’s memory soaked into every corner, seeping through the cracks and widening them to let the rain in- to leave them sodden and wet and miserable. Somewhere new.  


Ah, Marcellus doesn’t say, I know.  


“You’re lucky you are free enough to leave as you choose,” he says bitterly, tactfully, if a bit clumsily, instead.  


“No”, Horatio corrects, blinking muzzily, “I’m lucky to be useful enough to be needed elsewhere.”  


Even before Hamlet’s death and ever since, everything has been in terms of denial and hypotheticals, all while being anything but. Horatio is sick of it, but like anything else he lives it after a time: like the gnawing guilt, the thirst, his eyes following Hamlet’s movements across the room, his steps always racing after Hamlet’s-- his broken heart. He grows used to it all after a time, and soon doesn’t think of it often (always, he does). But Hamlet’s death is still too raw, the grief too near, and so Horatio finds that itching ache to leave spreading farther and farther, pushing him to run.  


Marcellus and Horatio are silent for the rest of the night as they finish the bottle.  
~~~  


Fortinbras’s eyes follow Horatio’s figure as he leaves the room shortly after his announcement and resignation. Because Horatio has his back turned for the first time since the series of events leading up to Hamlet’s death, he does not see Fortinbras’s face go dark- his brows furrowed and expression closing as he watches Horatio leave. He doesn’t need to.  


Horatio doesn’t look back at Elsinore as he leaves. He would not stay anyway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7\. It is in this moment that Fortinbras thinks to himself that yes, someday he might be able to love this man. He will always play second fiddle in Horatio’s broken heart, but in the meantime, for that moment, it is good enough. Because despite everything [the gore, the tragedy, the heartbreak] in that moment standing on the edges of war (and all the moments after, if Fortinbras admits to himself in the quiet) Horatio is beautiful. Fortinbras will never know that the regard Horatio holds for him is never going to be enough to make him stay, though it is something that slowly dawns upon him, as Horatio makes his announcement to leave. Similarly, Fortinbras never realizes that he ever had a heart to break until he finds that it does.  
> 8\. In case you didn’t pick up on it because I am obscure as fuck I was actually referring to Ophelia.  
> 9\. Literally all i can think of when I write Fortinbras name is that post that was like-- Hamlet: “Fortinbras? Fourteen bras. That’s like… 28 titties” // Horatio: “...”  
> 10\. To glance at maps pinned to the walls of Fortinbras’s chambers; to ask the kitchen’s for a bit extra salted meat; to systematically go through his things each week, and in his down time think less and less offhandedly of what he can bear to live without (Hamlet, his thoughts run to traitorously every time- but Hamlet is gone, and that is the reason that Horatio faces this need to run).  
> 11\. He has better shores to find, after all. And a horticulturist hiding away somewhere on the high seas between here and the horizon. He has mourned on the death of those he has lost for too long, it is time for him to make the most with the time he has been so lucky to have remaining.


	6. CODA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is it! I hope you enjoyed! If you didn't, don't tell me that, it'll break my heart!

CODA

vi.  
i keep thinking of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, neither one without the other, impossible to tell apart and always together, even in death. Recruited to fight in a war they never wanted.   
(they knew what was in the letter Hamlet sent with them).

Something inside Horatio shakes when he sees an empty Elsinore he does not recognize without Hamlet. Horatio is far too sensible now to kill himself for love. He wishes that he was not. He doesn’t know if Hamlet knew what he was making him promise, when he told him to watch, to witness. To stay behind when everyone else has left.  
Did Hamlet know how much it would hurt to be alone? Horatio wishes he didn’t love Hamlet enough to listen. It hurts, that emptiness.  
So he leaves.   
He does not look back and his hands are steady as he goes. 

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12\. Horatio knows that Hamlet believed in ghosts- he followed the commands of that blasted shade of his father, from the first letter to the last word. Horatio knows how far Hamlet would go out of the love for those dear to him- even kill. He just wishes that Hamlet had loved him enough to stay. (He doesn’t know what he would do though, if Hamlet ever came back as a shade- both of them deserve their rest, after all this time.) 
> 
>  
> 
> Flower Meanings:
> 
> Grass- homosexuality  
> Nettle- life and death, protection  
> Pansy- thoughts  
> Rue- regret  
> Anemone- hope/fading hope  
> Cyclamen- goodbye  
> Sweet Peas- goodbye  
> Traveler’s Joy- have a peaceful journey  
> Bellflowers- thank you  
> Stock- bonds of affection (used to represent siblinghood/ “like a brother to me”/platonic affection)  
> Hydrangea- gratitude and thankfulness  
> Cypress- mourning  
> Snapdragon- graciousness and strength (and deception)   
> Chrysanthemums- joy, long life, and truth  
> Thistle- pride, pain, and protection  
> Gladiolus- remembrance  
> Ivy- friendship, continuity  
> Daffodils- regard, and new beginnings
> 
> Ophelia’s Final Message (Roughly):  
> I’m dying”, so let me tell you my thoughts. Have hope, because I have none; I only regret not telling you sooner before I leave. Goodbye, I am grateful to you my brother, thank you for everything you’ve done and may both of us have a peaceful journey. Mourn for me as I mourn for you, even if my death is a deception. You know the truth, though it will pain us both. Stay safe and remember me, I will hold our friendship close always. My regards, may we both have new beginnings.

**Author's Note:**

> Now with German translation by Skotophobia!!!!
> 
> https://www.fanfiktion.de/s/5cea7dae000454e7251d8c08/1/wide-eyes-steady-hands

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tides That Bind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19805299) by [maplewoodmoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplewoodmoth/pseuds/maplewoodmoth)




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